benjamin
GROSSER

Computers Watching Movies in processing at GPLcontemporary in Vienna

Opening today is processing, an exhibition at GPLcontemporary in Vienna. In the (Google translated) words of curator Magdalena Stöger:

The possibility of speech between man and machine by programming software and the writing of algorithms enables a new way of looking at the generative process in artistic investigation. If the generative was originally described as the delivery of the individual subject and as an uncritical use of program code for the computation of a final work, many artists today deal with the extended scope of action, expressive possibilities, and the performative quality of code. This survey of the code, however, is not limited to its artistic qualities, but often transcends an examination of its social, political and technological meanings, and simultaneously breaks down as a pure tool. This exhibition brings together artistic experiments, questions and definitions that reflect the generative and find an individual contextualization. In the appropriation of a generative process, the artists understand code less as a craft, but as an artistic possibility of expression and an extended space for action. “Processing” therefore shows intimate insights as well as critical societal reflections, and devotes a wide range of ideas and negotiations to the programming artist. In formats such as graphics, generative films, sculptures or robots, various manifestations of the generative are examined and discussed in the exhibition.

My work Computers Watching Movies is part of this group exhibition, which also includes works by Ursula & Michael Endlicher, Mike Huntemann, Martina Menegon, Julian Palacz, Niki Passath, Christa Sommerer & Laurent Mignonneau, Clemens Tschurtschenthaler, and Martin Zeilinger. It opens as part of Vienna Art Week, and runs through the end of November.

Accès)s( Festival, Pau France, 10 Oct – 9 Dec, 2017

Computers Watching Movies is part of the Accès)s( Festival at Le Bel Ordinaire in Pau France. Under the theme Machine Sensibles (translation: “Sensitive Machines”), the festival focuses on
machines that defy our general understanding of what a machine is or can be by exhibiting works by artists who have specifically designed their machines to be “sensitive.” In the words of curator Christian Delecluse:

“Sensitive” machines are those that trigger an identification process, even a projection process in us. They mirror ourselves. They send us back to our own frailty, to our joys and our pains, our fears and anxieties, to our desire, and (to) the absurd behaviour we adopt at times to bypass our weaknesses. They face us with the beauty and the absurdity of the human condition. Yet is not that sensitivity a potential source of angst? To what point can we allow machines to look like us? A too-human-looking one might claim its rights as a “species”, in some emancipation move, or to overpower its creator. Is this the reason why, beyond a certain threshold of likeness, a humanoid robot will end up making our blood run cold and will in the end be rejected?

Read more at the Accès)s( Festival site. The exhibition is open through 9 December, 2017.

Simultan 2017, 3-7 Oct

Touching Software (House of Cards) will be part of this year’s Simultan Festival. Held in Timisoara, Romania, the event’s theme is “Possible Futures.” The festival runs from 3-7 Oct, 2017.

My work will be part of a couple screenings today. The first is a video demonstration of Facebook Demetricator as part of “Are We All Addicts Now?”, an exhibition and event series by Katriona Beales at Furtherfield Gallery in London. The second is a screening of Computers Watching Movies at the Auditing Algorithms Compressed Film Festival at the University of Michigan. Auditing Algorithms is a series of events this week(end) working to “… develop the emerging research community for ‘algorithm auditing’ … a research design that has shown promise in diagnosing the unwanted consequences of algorithmic systems.”

Go Rando at Kunsthaus Langenthal in Switzerland

My work Go Rando is part of a international group exhibition at Kunsthaus Langenthal in Switzerland. Titled Raus aus dem digitalen Unbehagen (Escaping the Digital Unease), the exhibition focuses on unease in contemporary digital life:

While we’re using products by Apple, Amazon, Google, Facebook and find them useful and indispensable, we’ve become aware of the dominance of such big players. Their services form our thoughts and commodify the ideas of friendship and exchange. We do not surf the wild web anymore, but are fed with feeds, receiving more and more of the same, based on algorithmic extrapolations of our preferences. With the social media account we rent services, which we pay with our data and attention. With Edward Snowden’s disclosures awareness on the excessive government-surveillence and their link to private actors has also reached a broader public. Since the beginning of the web, artists have built their own spaces and channels there. They have created artworks that reacted to commodification and restrictions in a critical way. The exhibition presents works from over 30 artists and collectives tackling these topics, raising awareness to the unease, showing its causes or possibilities of an escape from it.

Raus aus dem digitalen Unbehagen is curated by Raffael Dörig, Domenico Quaranta, and Fabio Paris, and is on view from 30 August to 12 November, 2017.

#homophily, now online at Peripheral Forms

My work You like my like of your like of my status is part of a new exhibition at Peripheral Forms in Portland. The exhibition, titled #homophily and curated by Jah Justice, draws connections between the 1950s sociology term—coined “to describe the tendency of people to form connections with others that are similar to themselves”—and the current state of social media echo chambers driven by advertising, data, likes, and clicks. You can see the exhibition online, running through the 31st of August.

Go Rando at the Athens Digital Arts Festival

My work Go Rando will be part of the Athens Digital Arts Festival in Greece. Under the theme #PostFuture, “ADAF 2017 aims to explore the future of digital culture, merging the digital and physical boundaries and discovering the effects of this futuristic lifestyle in the different aspects of everyday life.” Having been in the festival twice in previous years (with ScareMail and the premiere of You like my like of your like of my status), I’m happy to once again be a part of this event. The festival runs from the 18-21 of May.

Touching Software at European Media Art Festival

My work Touching Software will be a part of the 2017 European Media Art Festival in Onsabrück, Germany. Titled “PUSH”, the Festival’s thematic statement reads:

Push messages, status and news updates, social bots and hate comments – smartphones and screens are permanently blinking and flashing. Public spaces have always been permeated by announcements, warnings and spectacles. Today, we are experiencing an increase in input pressure – after all, every one of us is a recipient, producer and sender, all rolled into one. Public opinion is characterised by constant information and disinformation. The result: differences between public and private spaces disappear, positions that were thought to be secure vanish, and populists find their way into government.

The Festival runs from 26-30 of April.